After seeing the recipe from my childhood for Tomato Pudding I began to think. (That was not wood burning folks.)

I would like all of you to look at some of your older cookbooks and find recipes from yesteryear. There is a reason libraries and folks like us collect those old cookbooks. It will give you older more senior ones a reason to travel down memory lane and you younger folks to get an idea of what we ate as a child. And it will give all of you a chance to slow down and do some great reading.

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Illegitimi non carborundum!
I don't want my last words to be, "I wish I had spent more time doing housework"

Before I retired I was asked to research and write some Victorian recipes for a Dickensian themed magazine using food that might be liked by some of the characters in his books. I loved researching these recipes, and the Victorians (in the U.K., don't know about the U.S.A) ate some foods that I think might not be liked that much now.

I'll see if I can find some of them, but I do remember the Bill Sykes Calf's head stew with the brains made into little piles to decorate the plate.

I love to hear of old cooking traditions, I forgot where I heard it or read it but one of my favorites was:
A women preparing dinner for her family slices big chunks off each end of the ham before putting in the pan and cooking it with no explaination. As her daughter watching she learns from her mother that was the way her mother did it. She carries the tradition over again to her daughter so when her husband ask why does she do that to the ham everytime she said because thats the way my greatgrama, my mom did it. so at a celbration for the the great grandmother she ask greatgrama when cooking a ham why did you always cut the ends off the ham? The great grama replys, because I never had a pan big enough for it to fit. funny how traditons get carried over.

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One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching

Back to the subject of cookbooks which I forgot to add.
I love to go to garage sales and find the old cookbooks, the ones from churches are great. You always could tell the favorite of each book as it was the page with the most stains or a rip or 2.
I was recently aunt my 90 year old aunts house looking for a favorite recipe of my dads (85) that she might have and she dug out my grandmothers (their mother) recipe box for when they were kids. When a treat looking through that. My aunt till has a coffee cup that my grama used for measuring. I had to laugh as she had a recipe for making hot tea - boiling the water etc. What a great memory trip.

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One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching

I went to a potluck where retro food was the theme. I brought a chiffon cake and a dessert made with Jello and molded, it was delightfully jiggly. The jello dessert was one weird one that my grandmother brought to every function and as weird as it was, it was delicious. Here are some of the ingredients- Lime Jello, cream cheese, mayonnaise (not kidding), crushed pineapple and whipped heavy cream. I grew to love it before knowing what was in it, because as a child I would have never eaten it otherwise! May have had melted marshmallows in it too.

I went to a potluck where retro food was the theme. I brought a chiffon cake and a dessert made with Jello and molded, it was delightfully jiggly. The jello dessert was one weird one that my grandmother brought to every function and as weird as it was, it was delicious. Here are some of the ingredients- Lime Jello, cream cheese, mayonnaise (not kidding), crushed pineapple and whipped heavy cream. I grew to love it before knowing what was in it, because as a child I would have never eaten it otherwise! May have had melted marshmallows in it too.